Lights Out

I woke inside a void of pitch

Without a speck of light

In anechoic silence

With all senses numbed but mind

Perceiving no surroundings

I wondered if I’d died

Yet knew I was aware

Which is the essence of my life

Had all else reached extinction?

Had substance nullified?

And if it still existed

What real purpose could it bide?

Then in my thoughts recalled the forms

Of sound, and touch, and sight

Of smell and taste preserved inside

The memory of mind

I fathomed all the concepts born

Of numbers, space, and time

The impotence of truth

Unless awareness had entwined

I realized that existence

Then had always been consigned

Within the walls of cognizance

Where all was circumscribed

When trees fall in this forest

Be it truth or of the mind

Here cast in molds of sentience

Wherein truth is defined

Dispense we thus with hearsay

And witness with our lives

The truth we source through self

Be as a universe inside